


reclaiming red

by lesbiankavinsky



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: F/F, butch noora, warning for some descriptions of past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-09 00:41:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11658033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiankavinsky/pseuds/lesbiankavinsky
Summary: They spend the afternoon going from store to store, and despite the now giant gap in her wardrobe, Noora is having trouble finding anything she wants. Finally they end up in a thrift store, which Noora thinks is a good idea anyway because she really can’t afford to buy much from the places they’ve been in so far. She’s flipping idly through shirts when she hears Eva say, “What about this?” She’s in the men’s section, holding up a shirt with a single “H” stamped on the right side of the chest. “H as in, have you got anything to wear?”





	reclaiming red

Breaking up with William is like remembering to breathe. Not remembering _how_ to breathe, not relearning it, not exactly. It’s like that moment in a sobbing fit when you realize you’ve been holding your breath -- that first inhale, a shock to the system, painful and necessary. She tells Linn and Eskild that it’s because William was busy all the time because she’s not ready to give her real reasons, to say them out loud. Not yet. She’s not ready to talk about his disappointment in her when she couldn’t testify against his brother and how that somehow flipped a switch in her and she realized that at some point everything she did had become about him, and that she had become terrified -- deeply, frantically terrified -- of failing him in any way. The next thing she realized was that you can’t be with someone you’re terrified of failing, because it means you can’t say no. She hadn’t been saying no to William for a long time, and that truth settled in her gut like a stone. While William was gone, she packed up her things and she left, and the further she got from London, the more her body and her mind and her heart felt like they belonged to her. But even then she knew it was going to be a long process.

Now, back in Oslo, she tries to simply pick up her life and keep going. On the outside, it pretty much works. She goes back to school and she’s welcomed back into the Girl Squad with open arms and the kollektiv are delighted to have her back. But on the inside, it feels like there’s a discontinuity, a deep divide of _before_ and _after_ , like the divide of before and after that first boy when she was thirteen, before and after leaving home at fifteen. This divide is somehow made more terrible by the fact that no one else seems to see it. _What do you want?_ She asks herself on Sunday night, unable to sleep, knees curled to her chest where she lies in the closet off the room that used to be hers where Isak now lives. The answer, immediate, coming from some part of herself she can’t name, is simple. _I want to be visible._  

This particular night, one of the many reasons she can’t fall asleep is that she’s hounded by the sensory memory of William’s hand in her hair which feels, even now, like a violation. It’s almost four in the morning and maybe that’s why the frustrated thought that she wants to just shave it all off turns, over the course of half an hour spent tossing on the thin little cot currently serving as her bed, into a real and concrete plan.

She opens the closet door as quietly as possible, walking slowly through the dark room to avoid waking Isak and makes her way down the hallway with a hand against the wall. In the bathroom she rummages through the cracked plastic box where Eskild keeps his toiletries -- privacy be damned, it’s not like he’s ever had any respect for her things -- and finds the clippers he uses to buzz his hair. She stands in front of the mirror holding them and looking at herself for a moment before deciding this job will be a lot easier if she doesn’t have so much hair to start with, so she ventures back out into the darkness of the flat to find a pair of kitchen scissors in the knife block. Back in the bathroom she hacks away at her hair, leaving clusters of blonde on the floor and there’s something thrilling about it, the fact that it’s too late to go back now. The result is a hairstyle that looks like it belongs on a feral four year old boy, which isn’t entirely unappealing either. She picks up the clippers, takes off the little plastic guard that Eskild uses to maintain his quarter inch of hair, and turns them on. The mechanical buzz does something to finally settle the rushing in her blood and she moves the clippers slowly, methodically over her head. It takes her a while to get a hang of it, a while to get all the patches she somehow missed the first time around, but when she’s done, she looks into the mirror with a thrill in her chest. She’s not sure it looks _good_ , exactly, but it looks _right._ And that’s so much more important these days.

She sweeps up the hair on the floor and takes a shower, rubbing her hands over the prickly surface of her head. It feels nice, she thinks. When she gets out of the shower it’s a shock to see herself, but not a bad one. _Like remembering to breathe,_ she thinks.

By now it’s nearly six. Not worth even trying to go back to sleep. She’s exhausted, but she’s also a little electrified. It feels like she’s doing something big, something important. Back in her closet, she digs through her clothes, looking for something to wear to school but everything seems wrong somehow, not a part of who she is now. She can’t say why exactly it feels like shaving her head has made her into a new person, but it really, really does. After a while, she settles on one of the oversized t-shirts she usually wears to bed and baggy jeans. She looks at herself in the mirror that hands on the closet door and rolls up the sleeves of the t-shirt, tilting her head. It feels tenuous, this sense that she looks _right,_ but it hasn’t broken yet. She doesn’t even think about putting on lipstick but she slips a tube of it into her pocket anyway, just because she’s used to having it there.

Outside, she can hear the first sounds of Isak getting up, and she takes a breath and opens the door.

Isak turns to look at her and freezes. She smiles tight and says, “Morning Isak. Yes, I know, my hair is gone. Can I borrow one of your hoodies?”

“Uh…”

“Come on, Even takes them all the time. You can spare one.”

“I mean, sure. Just not the red one.”

Noora takes one of the few that isn’t lying on the floor, a thick gray one that she tugs on as she leaves the room. In the hall, she puts her rain jacket on over the hoodie and steps into her rubber boots though it doesn’t look like rain and slings her backpack over one shoulder. She doesn’t need to leave so early but she wants to get out of the house, wants to be walking. It doesn’t take her long outside to realize she should have worn a hat. It’s not too cold yet, but it certainly isn’t warm, and she’s never really realized how much work her hair did to keep her head warm, so she drops into a store on the way to school to get a cheap beanie.

In the schoolyard, the girls are sitting on their usual benches. She approaches them feeling somewhat awkward, tugging at the strap of her backpack.

“Hi guys,” she says.

“Hey,” Eva says, looking up. “Oh. Oh, you cut your hair?”

Noora takes a breath and nods, then pulls off her beanie.

“Oh shit,” Chris says. “You like, _really_ cut your hair.”

“Was it an accident?” Eva asks, and Noora shakes her head.

“No,” Noora says. “I wanted it all gone. I did it myself.”

“I like it,” Sana says. “Very you.”

Noora smiles at Sana, hoping that the smile can communicate just how much that means to her.

Vilde is just staring at Noora, speechless, which Noora tries to ignore.

“Yeah,” Eva says, clearly beginning to adjust. “Yeah, it looks good." 

The bells begin to ring and the rest of the girls get to their feet to head into the school building. On their way in, Vilde catches her arm. “You’re still pretty, you know.” 

Noora attempts a smile but guesses it looks more like a grimace. Vilde means well, of course, but she doesn’t know how to communicate to anyone, and particularly not to Vilde, that she doesn’t _want_ to be pretty. That pretty feels bad and unsafe and not her. That it feels better to hear, over and over again over the course of the day, “Oh no, you cut off all your pretty hair!”

~

A few days later, Noora starts going through her clothes, tossing most of it into a big black trash bag.

Isak comes and hovers by the closet door.

“Uh, what are you doing?”

“I’m going to give away some clothes.”

“That’s, uh. That’s a lot of clothes.”

“Well, I’m going to get some new ones. I’ve got some money saved up, I’m going on a shopping spree with Eva this afternoon.”

In the end, she keeps barely any of her clothes. It’s going to be an expensive shopping trip, she realizes, but it feels somehow important.

Eva picks her up at the flat and they head downtown together on the tram.

“So what are you looking for?” Eva asks.

Noora shrugs. “Just -- new stuff. Nothing I have feels right anymore.”

“Okay,” Eva says, and Noora can feel the question in the word, Eva’s awareness that this isn’t a complete answer.

Noora glances quickly at Eva but looks away. It’s strange -- the Girl Squad have always been cuddly, crowding together in one another’s beds to watch movies, arms linked as they walk through the school yard, reassuring hands on shoulders. But Eva’s body has started to feel like forbidden territory lately and Noora has become hyperaware of the world of difference in the few inches between her arm slung around Eva’s waist and her hand resting on Eva’s hip or on the small of her back. And she knows what that means, but she’s not sure she’s ready to talk about it yet.

They spend the afternoon going from store to store, and despite the now giant gap in her wardrobe, Noora is having trouble finding anything she wants. Finally they end up in a thrift store, which Noora thinks is a good idea anyway because she really can’t afford to buy much from the places they’ve been in so far. She’s flipping idly through shirts when she hears Eva say, “What about this?” She’s in the men’s section, holding up a shirt with a single “H” stamped on the right side of the chest. “H as in, have you got anything to wear?”

Noora laughs at that and comes over to where Eva is standing. “I might have to get that,” she says. 

“Bit big for you,” Eva says, but Noora shrugs. Too big feels good right now, the way it swallows up the shape of her.

She ends up taking a bunch of men’s clothes to the dressing room, shirts where the shoulder seam is about halfway between her elbow and her shoulder, cargo pants in boy’s sizes.

Eva comes into the dressing room too so that Noora won’t have to come out for every outfit, and Noora tries not to wish Eva wouldn’t look away when she’s changing clothes.

It’s during one of these times when Eva is turned from her that Eva says, “So these new clothes.”

“Yeah?” Noora says, pulling on yet another pair of pants that are the right size around the waist but way too tight around the thighs and hips.

“I mean. They’re pretty different.”

Noora is suddenly much more aware of her heartbeat. “Yeah,” she says. And Eva isn’t pushing, isn’t really asking, but the question is there beneath that not-quite-innocuous statement. Noora pushes the pants off in frustration and says, “I just don’t like the way guys look at me I guess. I don’t like -- people say I’m sexy, or whatever, and I. I know that’s supposed to be a good thing? But I don’t like it.”

“Okay,” Eva says. Clearly she’s not totally satisfied with the answer but Noora also knows she doesn’t have to say anything more if she doesn’t want to.

The next pair of pants she tries on actually work -- a bit loose around the waist but nothing a belt can’t fix, and blessedly loose on her legs. “How do these look?”

Eva turns to look at her and smiles. “Good,” she says. There’s a silence and then she goes on. “I don’t want you to think I meant I don’t like it -- the hair, the clothes. I do like it. I think it -- it suits you. You look good. Not like sexy but -- handsome, maybe?” 

Noora turns away quickly to pick up another shirt from her pile of things to turn on, not ready for Eva to see the tears that come to her eyes on hearing that. “Thanks.”

“Maybe handsome isn’t the right word. Like, you know those hot guys who like mow the lawns and blow the leaves in the park? Like that.” 

Noora freezes, highly aware of the fact that Eva just indirectly called her hot. She glances at her reflection in the mirror, seeing how small her arms are in the wide sleeves of the shirt she’s wearing. Maybe she should start going to the gym. She likes the idea of actually having biceps. “Uh, thanks,” she says, back still to Eva because she’s no longer on the verge of tears, but she’s now blushing furiously.

They leave the thrift shop with most of a replacement wardrobe for Noora and not too huge a dent in her bank account. When Eskild sees her in the kitchen in some of her new clothes he says, “Well, you’ve gotten butch.” Noora doesn’t really have words for the strange mixture of anxiety and joy that wells up inside her, but she tries to hold onto the delight.

~ 

Noora always thought she’d tell Eva first, but it ends up being Sana.

The two of them are sitting on the big windowsill overlooking the schoolyard.

Sana is reading something and Noora is watching her. She doesn’t know why she says it just then, only that Sana is safe, and she doesn’t feel like she can go on _not_ saying it.

“You know, I had the biggest crush on you during second year.”

Sana looks up from her book, eyebrows raised.

“I hope that’s not a weird thing to say?”

Sana shrugs. “Nah, it’s flattering.”

“You were just -- the coolest girl I’d ever met. And I thought I was so lucky to be on a bus with you. And.” She looks at Sana and takes a deep breath. “And I told myself it wasn’t a big deal, that I just thought you were really cool and it didn’t mean anything but. But then there was Eva, too, and -- Vilde would make those jokes about me being -- about. About me being a lesbian, and I could never just say no. And then I started dating William and it was like hey! Look! I’m dating a boy so it doesn’t mean anything, it never meant anything! I can’t be a lesbian if I’m dating this boy.”

“But you could be bisexual,” Sana says softly.

“Yeah,” Noora says. “I could.” She looks out the window. “But I’ve been realizing, lately, that I don’t want to date a boy. Ever again. And I’ve felt that way since I broke up with William, and I thought it’d fade after a while, but it hasn’t. And I don’t know if I’m attracted to guys, or if I will be again. But honestly it doesn’t matter. Because I don’t want to be with them. I don’t. I don’t even want them to look at me. I don’t want them to think I’m sexy, I don’t want them to think I’m pretty. And then I thought for a bit that I didn’t want anyone to like how I look, but then when me and Eva went shopping for new clothes for me, she said --” Noora grins at the memory. “She said I looked hot like the guys who do maintenance in the park.” 

Sana laughs. “You know, I can see that.”

“And that felt so good! It makes me sick when boys think I look good, but when it’s girls it’s. It’s thrilling. So yeah. I am a lesbian.”

Sana smiles at her -- that sweet smile with the dimples and the light in her eyes and yeah, okay, maybe Noora still has a little bit of a crush on her, but she knows where her heart really belongs. “Thanks for telling me,” Sana says.

Noora smiles back, pressing her tongue against the backs of her teeth to stop herself from tearing up. “Thanks for being safe to tell.”

Sana shuffles forward to pull her into a hug and it’s a little awkward but it’s sweet and Noora feels a relief so big it doesn’t quite fit in her body. 

~ 

She tells the rest of Girl Squad near the end of that spring and it goes pretty well. Vilde is a bit awkward about it in a way that makes Noora wonder if some of the things she said about it hit a little too close to home for Vilde, but the rest are perfectly sweet about it and Chris actually bakes her a cake and their comfort with the fact of her sexuality becomes clear as they make more and more jokes about when she’s going to move out of the literal closet she’s still somehow living in. She puts a rainbow pin on her backpack, makes a post on Facebook, and just like that, she’s out at school. Which comes with plenty of headaches, because people think it’s okay to ask her questions it’s _really really_ not okay to ask, and she’s getting even more nasty looks from people than she did when she first shaved her head, but she has her friends, and her friends have got her.

Summer comes and they all spend a lot of time in Eva’s bed, watching movies together and talking and keeping terrible hours. Because of the housing situation at the flat, Noora is spending a lot of nights at Eva’s house, in her bed. And it’s fine, really, because it’s better than sleeping in a literal closet and Noora doesn’t mind at all if she wakes up with a leg tangled up with Eva’s or the side of her face against Eva’s neck. It’s _fine_.

During the holidays they spend a lot of late nights watching _Twin Peaks_ together, cuddled up in Eva’s bed because Noora found out that Eva knows nothing about it. “What did you think the Log Lady thing was?” She asks, laughing.

Eva shrugs. “I don’t know, it was just a you thing.”

And Noora realizes that it’s probably not really Eva’s type of show but Eva agrees to watch it so there they are in the dark, the faint glow of the TV falling across the curves of Eva’s face and Noora can’t look because she’s just really, _really_ beautiful no matter what light she’s in, which is totally unfair.

The theme music has a deeply soothing effect on Noora. This is the show she watched as a kid to settle herself when things at home were bad, and she’s always thought this is probably her equivalent of Proust’s madeleine, but without the nostalgia for her mother. Eva glances at her. “So what’s this show about?”

“Uh…”

“Yeah?”

“Well, there’s a dead girl, and her friends, and, uh, lots of affairs?”

Eva raises her eyebrows.

“Just watch, okay?”

And Eva does watch, or at least she does until the middle of the second episode, at which point she falls asleep, her head on Noora’s shoulder. Noora’s not really watching at this point either because it’s hard to focus with Eva’s breath against her collarbone. She reaches up to put an arm around her, and Eva’s head settles more heavily against the curve of her neck. As gently as possible, she runs her fingers through Eva’s hair and wonders how long they could just stay like this with the lights out and the soft American voices in the background, how long she could pretend that Eva feels the same way she does, that she could wake up any minute and look up at her and give her a sleepy kiss. But eventually Noora, too, gets tired, and reaches out for the remote to shut the TV off.

The summer wears on and Noora’s beginning to wonder if Eva’s getting more affectionate with her or if she’s just noticing it more because she craves it so much. It feels like it’s happening all the time these days -- Eva’s hand lingering on her shoulder, rubbing her head the day after she shaves it, brushing the side of Noora’s neck as she reaches past her. Noora can’t decide if she loves it or hates it.

“Is it creepy?” She asks Sana one day after Eva has left the two of them to meet up with Jonas, kissing Noora on the cheek as she went. “That I -- feel so much when she does things like that?”

Sana frowns. “Why would that be creepy?”

Noora shrugs. “I mean, she probably doesn’t mean anything by it, and I’m making it into this weird fantasy in my head and I mean, I don’t know, it feels good when she’s sweet to me but then I feel guilty.”

“I think,” Sana says, keeping her eyes ahead, “that you can’t usually control what you feel. You do your best to cultivate kind feelings in yourself, and generosity, but you should never hate yourself for feeling. Because you have to feel, and you can’t feel good things all the time. But even then -- what you’re feeling _is_ good.” She looks at Noora, her face entirely serious. “What you’re feeling is love. Maybe it’s just a crush or maybe it’s something more but it’s some kind of love. And that’s never bad. So as long as you don’t cross any boundaries without permission, I don’t think you have any reason to feel bad.”

Noora nods. “Thank you. Really, thank you. That makes sense.” She sighs. “I still feel kind of creepy though.”

Sana smiles sympathetically. “Well, it’s like I said. You can’t control what you feel. And sometimes you feel bad even when you know you haven’t done anything wrong.” She nudges Noora’s shoulder with her own. “I hope it gets better.”

~

There’s a Halloween party at someone’s apartment and Noora and Eva are going as Shelly and Bobby from _Twin Peaks_ and Noora has no idea how that happened. Okay, maybe she has a bit of an idea. Part of it is an excuse to wear her new leather jacket, and part of it is because Eva has actually gotten really into the show and found a picture perfect replica of Shelly’s waitress outfit in a costume shop and had suggested Noora go with her as Bobby so yes Noora knows how this happened but on an existential level she feels like she’s hovering five feet above her body as she walks with an arm around Eva’s shoulders and Eva’s arm around her waist, wondering how on earth this happened to her and trying to decide if it’s a good or bad thing. To cap things off, Eva has the top half of her costume unbuttoned to reveal a black lace bra [ like in the scene with the gun ](http://68.media.tumblr.com/566789633db2c61c8d3f891be2a45e13/tumblr_nn2ls4Xlib1r8swmoo5_500.png) \-- and a plastic silver gun in her hand. Noora feels like she’s been screaming internally since Eva picked her up from the flat half an hour ago.

It’s been strange watching _Twin Peaks_ again, after William. Because there are all these little moments where Leo reminds her of William, and she has to curl her hands into fists and clench her jaw and just ride the feeling out. Not that William ever hit her, but she sees the nervous way Shelly twists her hands together when Leo suspects her of cheating and it’s too familiar for comfort. Sometimes she wishes she’d had a Bobby to come take her away from him, but then again, she wishes she were Bobby. And really, she’d taken herself away from William, so she’d sort of gotten it both ways. And here’s Eva, tucked under her arm, hair caught in the breeze.

When they get to the party Eva grabs a beer and Noora knows, just knows, that Eva is going to get drunk and she’ll be so affectionate toward Noora, and she’ll probably play it up for the sake of the costumes, and Noora won’t know what it _means_ because Eva’s drunk and who the hell knows what a drunk girl telling you how much she loves you means? And maybe it’s the confidence boost she gets from the leather jacket or maybe it’s because she shaved her head earlier today, as she does every two weeks, and that always makes her feel like she owns her own body more than usual, or maybe it’s the fact that she can’t bear the thought of another night sitting sober next to a girl she loves, holding that word trapped so tight in her mouth, but she grabs Eva’s hand and starts tugging her toward the place she vaguely remembers the bathroom being from the last time she was at a party in this apartment.

“Noora?” Eva says.

“I just want to talk to you for a minute.”

“Okay.”

They finally make it through the crowd and Noora closes the door behind them. It’s not quiet exactly, but the noise of the party is muffled and it’s just her and Eva. 

“The costumes,” Noora says, and Eva frowns, tilting her head.

“Yeah?”

“I mean,” Noora says, and chokes out a laugh. “Look at us, we look like --” She wants to say _like a couple_ but can’t quite manage it.

“Like what?” Eva says.

“You just --” Noora just shakes her head. There’s no good way to do this. “You do these things, you say I look like the hot guys at the park, you -- you call me Nooramor, you say we should go to Halloween as a couple from my favorite TV show, I mean, what is this supposed to be? And you know I’m gay. You know. So is this a joke, or are you flirting with me, or what?”

Eva’s got a deer in the headlights look, and really, Noora can’t blame her. A couple months ago, if a girl had asked her if she was flirting, she’d have panicked. But she needs an answer from Eva. She really does. “Eva?”

“What do you want it to be?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Eva says, not quite looking at Noora, fiddling with her dangling blue earring, “if it was up to you, if I was flirting with you or not, what would you want it to be?”

Noora let’s out a breath. “Yes! God, yes, I would.”

And just like that Eva is kissing her, pressing her up against the door and Noora can feel the cool plastic of the fake gun against her neck and Noora doesn’t know what to do with her hands because very abruptly Eva’s body _isn’t_ a forbidden thing and she can rest her hands on Eva’s back, tracing the outline of her shoulder blades, can curl her hand around the back of Eva’s neck, pulling her impossibly closer. She can feel Eva’s fingernails at the back of her skull and she likes that, likes how different it feels from a hand in her hair. Eva has moved from Noora’s mouth to her jaw to her neck which is giving Noora a feeling like vertigo and also making her wonder how she ever thought she liked kissing boys, and then there’s a knock at the door.

They look at one another for a moment and then Eva collapses against her, giggling.

“Out in a moment,” Noora calls, holding Eva to her chest. To Eva, she says, “do you want to get out of here?”

Eva nods.

“Oh god, hang on,” Noora says and reaches out to wipe at Eva’s mouth with the pad of her thumb. They’ve made a mess of Eva’s lipstick, and Noora thinks there’s a fair chance that it’s all over her face as well. They take a moment to fix themselves up, but it’s probably still going to be pretty obvious, the two of them coming out of the bathroom together. “You alright with this?” Noora says, motioning to the door with her head.

Eva nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

Noora opens the door and they push through the crowd again, Noora holding tight to Eva’s hand, somehow still afraid to lose her in the crowd. They make it to the entrance, deflect Vilde’s questions about why they’re leaving so soon with a story about Eva feeling sick, and catch the tram up to Eva’s house, the two of them sitting way in the back, hands held tight, exchanging giddy glances.

Back at Eva’s they tumble, kissing, into Eva’s bed, and Noora thinks of all the nights she spent here wishing she could do just this.

~

Noora wakes up late the next morning, Eva curled into her, her head on Noora’s chest. It’s a long time before Eva wakes up but Noora doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to be anywhere but right here, where she’s allowed to run her hands through Eva’s hair and press kisses to the top of her head. When Eva finally does wake, stretching and rolling over, Noora misses the weight of her.

“Hey,” Noora says.

Eva looks at her, smiles sleepily, and says, “H.”

Noora closes her eyes and laughs, and then Eva is laughing and neither of them can stop for a good long time. When Noora finally manages to breathe again, clutching her ribs, she says, “I had no idea back then. You were -- I don’t know, you were so cute and awkward and I wanted to know you but I didn’t -- I didn’t know how to talk about how badly I wanted to know you, or how I felt when you smiled at me or -- or any of it.”

“Yeah,” Eva says. “Me neither.”

“I’m glad we know now.”

Eva nods. She gets a look on her face and Noora grins. “What?”

“I’m just remembering,” Eva says. “The first thing I noticed about you was your lipstick. I thought it made your mouth look -- kissable. Probably should have figured things out earlier, huh?”

Noora covers her face with her hands and laughs.

“Do you miss it?” Eva asks. “The lipstick.”

Noora shrugs, unsure how to respond. Because her first instinct is to say no, not at all, she _loves_ the way she looks now, and how differently people look at her. And that’s true, but at the same time, she does miss the feeling of lipstick on her mouth, the motion of applying it how distinctively _hers_ that shade of deep red had been. “I guess -- I wish I could wear it without all the assumptions people make about people who wear lipstick. Basically, I wish I could wear it without it being femme. Because that’s so, so not who I am anymore.”

“Maybe you could,” Eva says. “I mean, with the way you dress, maybe you could have just one thing that’s usually femme. But because it’s on you, it’s butch.”

“You don’t think it’d look weird?” Noora asks.

“No,” Eva says. Then she says, “Actually, yes, but like, in a good way. In a Noora way.”

Noora smiles. “If you think so, I might try it.”

Later, when they’ve gotten dressed and Eva has gone upstairs to get them some food, Noora stands in front of the mirror. She’s wearing the same thing she was yesterday -- black jeans, a red t-shirt over a white long-sleeved shirt. Reaching into the pocket of her jeans, she pulls the tube of lipstick that she still carries around with her like a security blanket and opens it. She hesitates a moment but then thinks of what Eva said, how she called her _kissable_. And then she leans toward the mirror and puts the lipstick on in that old familiar motion. Stepping back to look at herself, she grins. Because as familiar as the lipstick is, it looks absolutely different now. With her shaved head and her lack of other makeup, her men’s jeans settling low on her hips to reveal the waistline of her boxers, the lipstick means something totally different. She can’t quite put her finger on how or why, but it’s different, and it’s good.

“Hey,” Eva says from the doorway and Noora turns to see her holding a plate piled high with bread and cheese and fruit.

“Hey.”

Eva sets the plate down and walks up to Noora, looping her hands around Noora’s neck. “I like it,” she says. “Lipstick, but butch.”

“I like you,” Noora says.

“Yeah? I hadn’t guessed,” Eva says, playing it off but blushing all the same.

“I do, I do, I do,” Noora says, and presses a kiss to the corner of Eva’s jaw, leaving the imprint of her lips in deep red.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Balth for proofing & thanks to @stonebutchnoora on tumblr for the concept of butch noora and for being the source of a lot of noora's #aesthetic in this fic


End file.
